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Casamance Crisis: Wade’s envoy meets Jammeh

Aug 25, 2011, 1:53 PM | Article By: Lamin B. Darboe

A special envoy of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade Tuesday called on President Yahya Jammeh at State House.

The visit by Madicke Niang, minister of Foreign Affairs of Senegal, came barely a week after Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade visited Banjul to seek President Jammeh’s intervention in solving the decades-long conflict in the neighbouring Casamance region in the south of Senegal.

Speaking to waiting journalists after his audience with the Gambian leader, foreign minister Niang said he was in Banjul to felicitate President Jammeh on behalf of President Wade, following the “fruitful discussions” the two leaders held during Wade’s brief visit to Banjul last week.

“President Wade asked me to come and thank the Gambian leader for accepting to intervene in solving the crisis in Cassamance. President Wade is hoping that President Jammeh’s intervention will end the crisis in Cassamance, and bring lasting peace to the people of the region,” he told journalists.

According to Niang, President Wade also requested that a joint Senegalo-Gambian Commission on the Cassamance crisis meets in Senegal on 2nd September 2011, to discuss ways and means of ending the crisis.

“President Wade wants the two countries to work together as one family in order for them to achieve meaningful social and political development, in the best interest of the two countries,” the Senegalese foreign affairs minister further told journalists.

He also called on the people of the two countries to maintain the already existing peaceful and cordial relationship between the two countries.

Niang said he also assured the Gambian leader that Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade is ready to work hand in hand with him in ending the crisis in Casamance.

Meanwhile, President Jammeh also received in audience at State House yesterday, Dgibo Leity Ka, Senegalese minister of Environment and Wildlife Protection, who told journalists after his audience with the Gambian leader that he delivered a special message from President Wade.